HERE’S YOUR SIGN!
Isaiah 7:10-16
Matthew 1:18-25
God is with us, and we are saved.
A sermon preached by
Dr. William O. (Bud) Reeves
First United Methodist Church
Hot Springs, Arkansas
December 18, 2011
About forty years ago Bob Russell was a pastor in Louisville, Kentucky. There was a house near the entrance of his subdivision that kept their Christmas lights burning long after the season was past. They burned through January. Even through the first of February those outside lights burned every night. Finally, about the middle of February Bob became a bit critical and said, "If I were too lazy to take my Christmas lights down, I think I'd at least turn them off at night."
But about the middle of March there was a sign outside of the house that explained why they'd left the lights on. It said simply, "Welcome home, Jimmy." The family had a son in Vietnam, and they had unashamedly left their Christmas lights on in anticipation of his return.[1]
The lights were a sign of hope that their son would come home, and a sign of welcome when he did come home.
When we are anxious about life or when we are experiencing difficulties, or even when we are just wondering what to do and what to believe, it’s good to have a sign. It’s helpful and comforting to have some guidance that points us in the right direction.
Christmas is a sign, if we are wise enough to read it. Christmas can offer guidance to your life if you approach it with faith. To understand Christmas, we have to believe; we have to trust that God is revealing himself in the coming of Christ. Otherwise, it’s a pretty far-fetched story. A virgin conceives? God comes to earth as a human baby? The mystery of the incarnation demands faith.
Pope John Paul II wrote, “Christmas demands faith, because Christmas is a mystery. Our reason cannot succeed in trying to understand how God could possibly have loved us to such a degree. The shepherds are given a sign. They will find him in a manger.”[2]
God is all the time giving signs to his people, if we could just be wise enough to see them. We’ve been talking this Advent about signs God gave through the prophet Isaiah—swords into plowshares, lions and lambs living peacefully together, deserts blooming. In our Isaiah text today, the prophet said to the reluctant king, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign.”[3] The sign was Emmanuel.
To the frightened King Ahaz of Judah, the sign of Emmanuel was good news. The kings of Israel (the northern kingdom) and Syria had formed an alliance to force Ahaz to join them in their fight against the mighty power of the Assyrians, who were about to sweep across the land. When Ahaz heard about this alliance, he and all Jerusalem were shaking in their sandals. When Isaiah offered him a sign from God, Ahaz was too scared to even hear it! But Isaiah went on anyway: “Listen, house of David. You are wearing me out, and God’s getting pretty tired of your whining, too. So God is going to give you a sign whether you like it or not. See this young woman?”—and he pointed out a young lady of the court who was expecting a baby—“She is now pregnant and will soon have a son and name him Emmanuel.”
Ahaz and everyone else knew that Emmanuel meant “God is with us.” Then the prophet went on to say that by the time this little boy was old enough to know right from wrong, he would be eating the delicacies of the land—curds and honey—because good times would return, and the two kings that were so fearsome to Ahaz would be dispersed and destroyed.[4]
We don’t know who this young woman in Isaiah’s time was. It doesn’t matter. Isaiah’s point was simply that if Ahaz and the people would remain steadfast in their faith, then they would come through the time of struggle and find happiness and fulfillment again right where they were. Their enemies would disappear, and they would be safe again. It was a matter of faith.
This prediction by Isaiah was picked up by the early church as a reference to Jesus. He, too, was Emmanuel—God with us, literally.
We see faith at work in his mother Mary. As in Isaiah, Mary was a young woman—actually a virgin. (The Hebrew word in Isaiah does not necessarily mean virgin, but Matthew and Luke and the Pope and I all agree—she was.) When the angel announced her pregnancy, it was a death sentence. By the Jewish law, to get pregnant by another man while you were engaged to be married was punishable by stoning. Mary could have cried; she could have laughed; she could have run screaming down the street. But instead, she believed. She trusted that God was doing something incredible and unprecedented in her, and she submitted her will to his: “Let it be with me,” she said, “according to your word.”[5]
And what about Joseph’s faith? Can you imagine the emotions that went through his soul when Mary told him she was going to have a baby, and God was the Father? At least she got points for originality! Being a good man, he didn’t want to see it end badly, but he did want to see it end.
I can’t imagine that he was sleeping very soundly when the angel spoke to him in a dream: “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you will name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”[6]
So it was true. Then Joseph believed. He trusted God and did as the angel commanded him to do.
Without the faith of Mary and Joseph, Christmas would never have happened the way it did. Maybe God would have figured out another way, but God never forces himself on our will. We have to make the choice to believe, to trust, and to act in faith. Thank God Mary and Joseph did!
What is the faith of Christmas? What are we supposed to believe about this story? Joseph received two signs to guide his faith.
There was the sign of Emmanuel. The angel told Joseph to name the child Emmanuel because that meant “God is with us.” The angels told the shepherds, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child…”[7] Emmanuel is the child, and the child is a sign. But what does the sign mean?
Particularly at Christmastime, our culture sets us up for failure by feeding us all these false expectations for finding fulfillment. We are led to believe that we will be happy and satisfied if we have enough stuff, especially the newest toys out on the market. Christmas is supposed to be a time of harmony in our families, peace in the world, everybody getting along, nobody getting sick or dying—but it doesn’t happen that way, does it? These expectations of the perfect holiday will fail and fall short every time. That is not what Christmas is all about.
In Emmanuel, God has promised us inner peace in the midst of conflict, strength for every trial, comfort for our pain, guidance for our decisions, and faith in the future. He will never abandon us. So we need not be afraid. Our enemies will falter and fade and ultimately fail. Just don’t let the struggle take you down. Keep your connection with God. Have faith.
Several years ago there was a long distance runner named Kathy Ormsby. She was an excellent student, graduating number one in a class of 600 from her high school. Before she graduated, her home county declared a “Kathy Ormsby Day,” and everyone honored her by wearing buttons proclaiming her accomplishments. She ran in college for North Carolina State University. She earned straight “A’s” and set several significant records in her running career. It seemed like she would just keep going from one triumph to another.
Then, at the 1986 NCAA Track and Field Championships in Indianapolis, Kathy Ormsby went out on a bridge late one night and jumped off. Just like that, with no rhyme or reason at all, no apparent explanation. She just did it, and she almost ended her life. She did end her ability ever to walk again or accomplish any of the things that she had before.
Why would anybody do something like that? I don’t know; Kathy couldn’t even explain her actions. People who commit or attempt suicide are not always fully aware of their motives or intentions. But I think the comment of Dr. Don Shelby is right on target for all of us this morning. He said, “What occurred to this immensely talented young woman underscores how recognition is not enough. We also need connection! We need a purpose and a perspective that outlasts the glitter, the honors, the hoopla, the promotions and the prizes. We need a purpose that leads beyond achievement to fulfillment, beyond excitement to assurance, beyond [fame] to greatness, beyond ourselves to God!”[8] There is hope beyond the hoopla of Christmas, and we find it in the sign of Emmanuel.
The second sign given to Joseph was the sign of the Savior. The angel said to him, “You are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”[9] Jesus means “God saves,” and that is what this birth is all about. This is a baby with a mission—the salvation of planet earth. From the moment he was conceived in the womb of Mary, Jesus had a date with Calvary. His one purpose in life was to make a way for us to return to the Father, and that’s exactly what he did.
Do you want to hear the Christmas story in a nutshell? Here it is: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”[10] It’s all about the Gift, not the ones under the Christmas tree, but the One who was born in the manger, the One who gave his life for us to live—now and eternally.
Do you hunt for bargains at Christmas time? I guess everyone does. If you can get someone a nice gift for less money, there’s nothing wrong with that. Karen Morerod wrote in Decision magazine about going into a store looking for a sweater. She didn’t want to spend much money, so she went immediately to the clearance rack to look. There a particular sweater caught her eye. But what really attracted her was the price tag; she bought the sweater for only $8.00! The real surprise was when she got home and looked closely at the sweater, she saw the original price tag. It had originally cost $124.00! Karen had never owned a sweater that expensive. She had taken for granted that it was just an ordinary sweater; only later did she realize the value it had.[11]
Sometimes we take the free gift of God’s salvation for granted as well. We tend to treat it like a given, a bargain-basement garment of grace that we just happened to stumble on one day. Originally, however, this gift was quite expensive. It cost God his Son. It cost Jesus his life. The Good News is, it comes to us for free.
Can you acknowledge and appreciate that again as if for the first time today? God so loved you that he gave his only Son, so that if you believe in him, you will not perish but will have eternal life. Try saying it in first person: “God so loved me that he gave me his only Son, so that if I believe in him, I will not perish. I will have eternal life.” That is the gift of Christmas; that is the gift of Jesus—God saves.
In the British Weekly magazine dated December 7, 1919, the great British pastor and teacher Leslie Weatherhead shared a Christmas story about a postal clerk who worked during the holidays handling the letters to Santa Claus. They called him the “Nixie clerk” because he got the letters that were “nixed” because of undeliverable or illegible or incomplete addresses. (Kids, this was before the advent of email. People used to write letters on paper and put them in an envelope and put a stamp on it. Very primitive!)
Anyway, this nixie clerk had written to Dr. Weatherhead and told him about the piles of mail he had to deal with around Christmas time. This particular Christmas he was working late on Christmas Eve, trying to stay caught up. He wasn’t looking forward to going home anyway, because this was a particularly sad Christmas. He had just lost a child, a little boy, to pneumonia. Outside the post office, there was a great hustle and bustle, and shouts of “Merry Christmas!” and laughter could be heard up and down the street. But the nixie clerk felt a great shadow of sorrow hanging over him, and his eyes burned as he worked.
Finally a messenger handed him the last nixie of the day. He looked at it mechanically and saw a note from the postal carrier: “This was given to me by a little girl at 302 Walnut Street.” The clerk’s body tingled because that was his home address. He recognized the address to Santa Claus written in the cramped writing of his only living child, his little girl. He opened the letter and read what she wrote:
“Dear Santa Claus; we are very sad at home this year, and I don’t want you to bring me anything. Little Charlie, my brother, went up to heaven last week, and all I want you to do when you come to my house is to take his toys to him. I will leave them in the corner by the chimney, his hobbyhorse and train and everything. He will be lost up in heaven without them, especially his horse. He always enjoyed riding it so much. So you just take them to him, and you needn’t mind leaving me anything.
“If you could give Daddy something that would make him stop crying all the time, it would be the best thing you could do for me. I heard him tell mommy that only eternity could cure him. Could you give him some of that? Be sure to take the things to Charlie, and I will be your good little girl.”[12]
Unfortunately, Santa Claus cannot deliver eternity. But God can. God can! God can bring us eternal life; he has given us a sign!
What do you really need this Christmas? Do you need comfort, connection, strength, peace, and hope? Here’s your sign. Emmanuel—God is with us. Jesus—God saves. When you believe that, when you trust that with all your heart, then you will be fulfilled; you will be satisfied; you will be happy. That’s the Good News of Christmas! Amen.